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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 5204140" data-attributes="member: 704">As much as some people may dislike the notion of metagaming, only a very small minority of players are going to be able to look past the fact that they are all sitting around a table engaged in a totally artificial situation from which all concerned are meant to derive enjoyment.To that end, I think it is important to bear in mind that your players expctations of the game and how they arrived in that situation are of great importance.  Exactly how they choose to handle the predicament will have less to do with the tactical correlation of force that they are presente with, and more to do with how the situation came about and what they as players expect to happen next.The first thing to keep in mind is to figure out if the players will even realize they are meant to be over matched.  Low level characters will generally run if you sell the apparent power level of their foes hard enough.  But in Paragon tier, it gets very difficult for the players to be forced off in any ambiguous situation.  A human warrior with a sword?  Not going to scare anyone.  A human warrior with glowing eyes and a sword that cuts arc's of light into the air?  Still wont do it (the players will be thinking of how sweet that sword will be when they are holding it).  50 Orcs?  Probably not going to run the players off without a fight.  But 50 Giants?  Or a sufficiently large dragon?  That will usually run the players off.Then there is the group dynamic.  A DM who has never seriously threatened the survival of his players is not going to be able to run them off without a fight.  A DM who has a high PC mortality rate is probably going to have much more cautious players.Finally, there is the player expectation of fair play for lack of a better word.The DM may make the rules and dictate the situation.  But the PC's are going to have certain expectations.  The phrase "Are you sure you really want to do that?" is probably the single most effective way to get the PC's to back off.  If the players have no warning at all that they are about to walk into a TPK, then the chances of them running off are low.  If the players are given some indication that they may be making a mistake, then the odds of their survival improves.If the players are surrounded by a recognizably and blatently obvious overwhelming force and told to surrender or die, I would have to say that yes, the players will surrender.  but I am talking about something on the order of say, an army of 10 000 foot soldiers, or a few hundred Giants.  Or an Army of the legions of hell led by a Baatezu general.  However, the players will complain of being railroaded.But if you have a group of 10th level PC's surrounded by say, 200 Orcs (assorted types), the players may very well try to fight their way out.  200 Orcs could be 150 minions after all.In my experience as a DM, you can get the players to surrender before the fight starts.  But once the fight starts the players will neither surrender nor flee until it is probably a bit too late.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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